“The issue about taxpayers funding public broadcasting isn’t about who gets hired or fired, it’s about two simple facts: we can’t afford it and they don’t need it,” DeMint said in a statement. “We’re facing a $1.5 trillion deficit and spending hundreds of millions on public broadcasting makes no sense today when they are raising millions from private donors and Americans already have thousands of media choices.”

Schiller’s immediate resignation comes in the wake of a sting video that conservative James O’Keefe released Tuesday morning. The radio network already dismissed NPR Foundation nonprofit president Ron Schiller for disparaging remarks he made about the Tea Party movement and for saying NPR would survive and be “better off” in the long run without federal funding.

DeMint and Sen. Tom Coburn, Oklahoma Republican, are cosponsoring Senate legislation that would defunding NPR, PBS and the Corporation for Public Broadcasting.

“Our concern is not about any one person at NPR, rather it’s about millions of taxpayers,” Cantor said. “NPR has admitted that they don’t need taxpayer subsidies to thrive, and at a time when the government is borrowing 40 cents of every dollar that it spends, we certainly agree with them.”

UPDATE: 12:45 p.m.: Rep. Doug Lamborn, Colorado Republican, said this is another reason it’s time to “push Big Bird out of the nest,” playing off PBS’s Sesame Street main character.

“This latest development in what appears to be an internal meltdown at National Public Radio only strengthens my resolve to eliminate all federal funding for NPR and its parent organization, the Corporation for Public Broadcasting,” Lamborn said in a statement. “I have been seeking to push Big Bird out of the nest for over a year, based on the simple fact that we can no longer afford to spend taxpayer dollars on non-essential government programs. It’s time for Big Bird to earn his wings and learn to fly on his own.”

so why should they get taxpayer money at all? As was already mentioned, national progressive radio and PBS should compete on the open market. Part of the 14B waste in taxpayer money??? I’m really disappointed that these stories keep coming out and excuses are made for this lame, one-sided behavior. I am tired of the hypocrisy and the double standards that these progressive media-types continue to spread to the sheep that listen and watch them. It’s that time where what is right is wrong and what is wrong is right…. I guess I need to be grateful that I’m not led around by the nose like the sheep….. There’s sure to be some great excuses for this by the libtards posting here – should be entertaining, anyway…

CONGRESS MUST IMMEDIATELY STOP ALL TAXPAYER MONEY GOING TO NPR AND PBS !!!!!!!!!

The warped lunatic-left d-crat socialist ideology demands that taxpayers fund each and every one of the outrageous wasteful, irresponsible, immoral and offensive ideas they promote. Taxpayers must fund abortions, taxpayers must fund left-wing extremist propaganda radio and tv, taxpayers must fund eco-nut extremism, taxpayers must fund the d-crat socialist subsidiary called “pubic-sector unions”, taxpayers must fund “wealth and income re-distribution” from hardworking, responsible American citizens to the slugs, slackers, deadbeats and potheads at the core of the d-crat socialist party, and on, and on, and on. The d-crat socialists love to tax you to death, then tax your death, and have repeatedly shown that they will raise every tax and impose every fee that they can dream up to get them more money to fund their ideological perversions. But, like lunatic-left socialist d-crat TAX CHEATS geithner, rangel, daschle, olbermann, killifer, solis, kirk, sebelius, kerry and millions more, they hate to pay taxes for this waste, and they’ll cheat the government out of every penny they can.

johno413

PBS and NPR have provided useful reports and information over time for me. Some of their personalities are the most outspokenly liberal in the media, but not all. However, their bias is obvious even to people I know who are almost fully in line with their ideology. Some don’t see it as a negative.

But DeMint has it right. Even if they were the most neutral organization out there, which they are not, there isn’t a good reason to funnel tax payer dollars to them. And no one has yet come up with a good reason why we do. One trite answer that many utter of polls showing NPR being a primary source of news actually works in the reverse. If it is so popular, it shouldn’t need subsidy. It should compete on the open market.